Viva Mozart!

During the two months Robert and I lived on opposite ends of the earth, he in the Netherlands and I in Hawaii, literally 12 time zones apart, I got involved in the local classical music scene in Maui. My blog “Maui Tips for Newcomers by a Newcomer” documents some of these activities but leaves out several important events that lead to where I am at today.

Barely a week after I returned to Holland at the end of May 2011, we had to prepare to give a concert in Warnsveld. We had not practised together for months. We had to come up with a new programme. What was possible and do-able in the short space of 5 days?

Mozart came to the rescue.

Just a month earlier I had turned pages for Katherine Collier, the pianist and developer of “Amadeus-The Magical Life and Music of Mozart” the opening concert of the 30th Anniversary of the Maui Classical Music Festival. The previous time I had visited the venue of the Makawao Union Church, I was the pianist. In fact, it was the very place where Robert and I gave our first public concert in the USA (not counting Houston Public Radio and the two house concerts in Houston that same month in 2007).

Collier’s Mozart was a brilliant programme, narrated by the Hawaii Public Radio announcer Howard Dicus. Ms Collier wore a white wig and dressed as Mozart. Each string instrument had a motif representing the main characters in Mozart’s life — his dad, his mom, his sister, his wife. The story of the child prodigy was told through music and narration. The audience got to sample a variety of his music: piano solo, string quartet, opera extracts, aria, etc.

Several weeks later while visiting friends in Colorado, I watched the director’s cut of the movie Amadeus. I was once more reminded of the ephemeral popularity of Mozart.

Mozart sells itself just as Hawaii sells itself. People will attend a concert of Mozart’s music, just as people will visit Hawaii (if they can afford the time and airfare). There is no need for embellishment or hard sell.

Our duo has more than enough Mozart for a full concert (45 minutes + intermission + 30 minutes). For the one hour programme without intermission, we have to choose what to leave out. We left out Carulli’s Variazione Sopra un Tema del Flauto magico di Mozart by Beethoven, op. 169 which we played extensively in 2007-2008. Hot off the press is Robert’s new arrangement of the Overture to the Magic Flute and the rest of the Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

The audience at the 3rd June concert in Warnsveld loved our programme. It was not difficult to do. Why did it take us 10 years to figure it out? We had been varying our programme as often as once every month, including difficult pieces such as the 30-minute long Grand Potpourri National which took months to get ready.

The page programme (PDF) of Viva Mozart! is ready to rock and roll. Our next concerts in the Netherlands are Sunday 26 June 2011 in Zeist, Thursday 7th July in Utrecht, and Sunday 17th July in Amsterdam.

Bekkers arrangement of Mozart's Overture to the Magic Flute for piano and guitar

Writing programme notes

Experienced concert programme note writers will have the notes at their fingertips. They just need to copy and paste into a new document. Most of us, however, start from scratch.

Having determined the order of pieces in a concert, it’s time to research the programme notes.

There are many ways to do this.

One way is to find as much as you can about each piece — the composer’s name, birth and death dates, opus numbers, circumstances surrounding the piece, who premiered it, where it was first performed or published, and anything that’s controversial or juicy for the audience to know. Such information puts the work in perspective. Interesting tidbits engrave the piece in the listener’s mind.

While most information is easily found on the Internet (wikipedia for instance), I prefer to “triangulate” — i.e. double check various sources. The opus numbers may be mistyped and propagated. People do fall into the lazy habit of copying instead of reinventing the wheel.

To avoid plagiarism, I would rewrite the sentences and paragraphs so there is no sign that I’ve copied word for word. This takes some practice.

To make the programme consistent, I would ensure that no work gets more attention (word length) than others, unless one piece is deliberately featured. If there is a theme to the concert, the text should fit to the theme.

For the two cello piano concerts in Warnsveld, we weren’t requested to produce programme notes. Yet it was a good exercise to come prepared. Sometimes we learn in hindsight what would have been a better order. In this case, there were several pieces to do with love and marriage — Chanson Triste (the end of a love), La Cinquaintaine (50 years of love and marriage), and Salut d’Amour (the beginning of love). It would have been a nice story to begin with Salut d’Amour instead of Chanson Triste.

Stephanie Hunt, cello; Anne Ku, piano

The three page programme notes can be found in a PDF.

The hidden world of music

When you sit in front of a musician, charged with energy and intensity, telling you some of the juiciest, untold stories of his life, how he made it to who he is today, it really hits you in the head. “Wow! I’m so lucky to be sitting here, in a private audience, to hear him off-stage. How many others get to hear this? “

But then, I’m a musician with lots of stories. I discovered that the life of a musician is full of interesting tales of the hiccups along the way, the strange experiences and life stories of people he meets and encounters in his travels. Every single concert has its own untold stories. We learn from them. They become the stuff of legends.

Yesterday we drove nearly 2 hours east to give concerts in two locations in the same village of Warnsveld in the Dutch province of Gelderland. Since we had forgotten what exactly we played in those concerts in late May, we decided to inject several guitar and piano solos for variety’s sake. It was the 200th birthday of Albeniz, Schumann, and Chopin — plenty of pieces to choose from.

As it was a hot day, I had brought along a plastic pitcher of iced tea. On the way to the refrigerator, the lady of the first house showed me the new apartment being made ready for a new resident. It’s the 14th ensuite room she said. You could hardly tell that this stately house of high ceilings in midst of a beautiful park was a place for the elderly.

We played in a corner room to an audience of 10. Once a month they gathered on a Friday afternoon for wine, coffee, tea, juice, and special snacks for a concert.

Just a short drive away was another house whose interior was more modern and the residents more alert. We played the “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” to open the half-hour first-half followed by the 25 minute “Grand Potpourri National.” It was time for intermission. Out came the “bitterballen” and other deep fried snacks on trolleys.

We played a further 15 minutes after the intermission. That was our day: a morning workout (yoga for me), a long drive, two concerts in a small village east of Zutphen, and a drive back to Utrecht.

I had arranged a 7:30 pm appointment in Doorn. We had a blind date with the American composer, pianist, and singer Rich Wyman and his wife Lisa, neither of whom we had never met.

They were nowhere to be found. In the reception (office) of the RCN Grote Bos, we tried to contact Rich. I had not taken down his Irish mobile telephone number which he had given to me in an e-mail. I tried to search for it on the slow computer without success. He had not checked into his bungalow. How were we to meet?

At 8 pm when we were just about to give up, a stocky man strolled into the office straight to where Robert and I sat. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said. “I left my telephone at the last place where I played. We went to Amsterdam this afternoon. We’ve been stopping at payphones trying to ring you. But we kept running out of coins. See, I even wrote your phone number on my hand.”

It was a strange way to meet. I explained later that I had “friended” a neighbour whom I had last seen in Okinawa in 1982. Her father and mine were colleagues. We all lived in the same neighbourhood and went to the same schools. She wrote on Facebook that a musician friend of hers was touring the Netherlands in the summer.

Rich Wyman led us through the grounds of the Dutch resort to find the staff member with the key to his bungalow. He brought us to the on-site restaurant and introduced us to his wife who practices yoga. “Anne is a friend of your best friend whom she’s last seen 28 years ago.”

We lost track of time over cold beer, red wine, and deep fried meatballs. We saw what we wanted to order from the menu. By the time we flagged down a waiter, it was past 9 o’clock — the kitchen had closed. We drove to the nearest restaurant in Doorn. The kitchen had also closed. “This would never happen in the States I’m sure. You have to plan ahead in this country,” I said.

Anne Ku meets Rich Wyman at RCN Grote Bos, Doorn Netherlands

We finally found an Italian pizza restaurant at 10 pm. The owner was happy to serve us, their only customer on a Friday night. Robert chatted with him about brewing beer while I talked about my yoga experience with his wife. Eventually the four of us started talking together about the hidden world of music in America.

“What’s your secret?” I boldly asked.

With great enthusiasm, the 7-time ASCAP award winning singer/songwriter from Park City, Utah started recollecting the day he decided to become a full-time musician.